| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Divine Comedy (translated by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow) by Dante Alighieri: Mystery of the Divine and Human Nature.
Incipit Comoedia Dantis Alagherii,
Florentini natione, non moribus.
The Divine Comedy
translated by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
(e-text courtesy ILT's Digital Dante Project)
INFERNO
Inferno: Canto I
Midway upon the journey of our life
I found myself within a forest dark,
For the straightforward pathway had been lost.
The Divine Comedy (translated by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow) |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Turn of the Screw by Henry James: of which I had had from Mrs. Grose, that first scared Sunday,
my flash of something it would scarce have done to call light.
Here at present I felt afresh--for I had felt it again and again--
how my equilibrium depended on the success of my rigid will,
the will to shut my eyes as tight as possible to the truth
that what I had to deal with was, revoltingly, against nature.
I could only get on at all by taking "nature" into my
confidence and my account, by treating my monstrous
ordeal as a push in a direction unusual, of course,
and unpleasant, but demanding, after all, for a fair front,
only another turn of the screw of ordinary human virtue.
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Two Noble Kinsmen by William Shakespeare: To swell about the blossome) oh, she would long
Till shee had such another, and commit it
To the like innocent Cradle, where Phenix like
They dide in perfume: on my head no toy
But was her patterne; her affections (pretty,
Though, happely, her careles were) I followed
For my most serious decking; had mine eare
Stolne some new aire, or at adventure humd on
From musicall Coynadge, why it was a note
Whereon her spirits would sojourne (rather dwell on)
And sing it in her slumbers. This rehearsall
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